Going out Looking our best
by Shadows of Sorrowful Smiles
Summary: Everybody dies at some point, and he supposes that's why he's so calm, but as he lays side-by-side with Lucy in the ruins of the guild, he can't help but regret the way things ended.


**Weird little angsty drama that I wrote in school... hrm...**

**I don't own Fairy Tail...**

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"We'll be going out looking our best."

It's not really the weirdness of her words(she's always weird, that weirdo), or the way she says them, but rather the defeated expression on her face that frightens him.

Lucy looks utterly _lost._ It pains him. Somehow, even more than the charred plank of wood that he sees spearing through his chest. That hurts, too.

Everything hurts.

"We'll be going out looking our best." Lucy repeats it, her own little mantra, and Natsu listens blankly.

He can hardly hear her over the ringing in his ears. It's weird about his ears, too, because one second he can hear some poor, near death mage wheezing almost silently, and the next he hears nothing.

"...Looking our best."

He blinks. Looks over at Lucy. Pauses.

Was her hair always so red?

Were her clothes always so ripped?

Was she always so defeated-looking?

_We're going to make it,_ he wants to say, but Lucy hates lies. So he watches as she despairs; watches, not speaks because the blood bubbling in his throat makes it hard to breathe, harder to talk. Lucy's eyes close.

"We'll be going," He rasps, and she shifts to face him, albeit slowly.

So, so slowly.

Was she always this slow?

Lucy exhales, and her eyes open. Natsu stares, but he doesn't have the energy to do anything else. They just stare at each other.

Like this is one of their staring contests.

Like they aren't broken bodies in a broken guild.

Like they aren't dying.

But it isn't. And they are.

So he smiles weakly, and waits for her to finish the sentence, but when she opens her mouth, it's blood that comes out.

He watches it as it oozes out; collects into a ruby trickle that drops -_splish splash_- onto the part of her arm that she's resting on.

"Lucy..." he whispers. The vacant look in her eyes dissolves, and she shuffles slowly, so slowly over to his side. He wants to turn, to face her, but the plank holds him in place.

She somehow manages to sit up, despite the fact that she has one arm -Mavis, she has one arm, like future-Lucy it seems- and both legs have been snapped. Despite the fact that nearly half of her side has been scraped out, she manages to sit up and use her one remaining hand to smooth out the crinkles in the jagged remainder of her skirt. She licks her hand and rubs her face, like a cat, like _Happy, _ he thinks, and her face is mostly clean of blood.

"Looking our best..." She echoes faintly, and finally gravity takes effect and she keels over.

Natsu watches. It's all he can do now. The ringing fades for several seconds, and he tenses at the sound of bubbling blood- but it's bubbling out of the gaping hole in Lucy; and in his groggy state he compares the flow to that one volcano he'd seen with Igneel.

"Looking our best..."

And then she's still.

Natsu can't believe it. One hand twitches, and he reaches out with all his strength... but the palm is cold. Far too cold.

He closes his eyes and lets the grief spill over.

He's the last one left. He doesn't know how he knows this, but he does. The other bodies of his friends, of his _nakama_, are strung about carelessly like one might fling a broken doll.

_We're all broken, now,_ he thinks with a bitter smile.

Well done, Tartarus. They have done what they've wished.

Fairy Tail is no more.

Natsu breaks into a fit of insanity-fueled laughter, grief numbing the pain so that he can't tell that a piece of wood has almost severed him in half.

_It's too bad,_ He decides.

His palms ignite, with hardly a spark, but he lights the plank of wood. He doesn't think it will work. The wood is already charred, which probably meant that he'd tried to burn it before, but it doesn't really matter.

The wood blazes.

_Nothing matters anymore._

The wood sparks and sputters, and he can barely see the orange glow through the terrible black haze that is now his vision.

The glow grows until he is bathed in soft, warm light.

And then the plank is gone.

He sits up. Reaches for his scrap of a scarf. Pulls Lucy's still body over to his side and wraps one stiff arm around her. With the other hand, he copies Lucy's grooming; smoothing out his soaked clothing and wiping away dried blood from his face.

He's going to die, too.

And he's going to go out looking his best.

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**... I've heard that line before, and it really touched me so I decided to write this little short fic to show what it means to go out looking your best.**

**In Natsu and Lucy's case, it means to make sure that their rags of clothing are as decent as possible, and that there isn't too much blood on their faces.**

**Omg hey that rhymed...**


End file.
